The US hit three nuclear sites in Iran overnight - but it remains unclear whether the strikes did destroy all of Iran's nuclear capabilities.
www.bbc.com
The big question
21:59
Frank Gardner
Security correspondent
The big question in all of this is an even more worrying one than "
will Iran try to close the strategic Straitof Hormuz?" - although that would certainly have major economic, political and military consequences.
Instead, the gravest question of all, to which almost none of us know the answer is this:
Does Iran still retain enough Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU), hidden away at a secret underground location, plus the knowledge and the means to weaponise it, to now take a decision to race for a crude nuclear bomb?
In other words, have the combined US and Israeli attacks removed the threat of Iran becoming a nuclear-armed state – or made it more likely?
A military expert I have spoken to maintains that if Iran has managed to preserve enough of its HEU then its scientists should, if left to work unimpeded, be able to test a simple, first-generation gun-type device using a neutron initiator. This device, he says, is easier to engineer than an implosion device.
It has long been assumed that if Iran acquires the bomb then Saudi Arabia and other states in the Middle East will also try to acquire it, triggering a nuclear arms race.